Glenda SimmsON AUGUST 14, 2003, the local media reported that Howard Hamilton, the Public Defender, said that Jamaica and the United States of America will soon be enacting legislation to force deadbeat fathers of Jamaican origin to take responsibility for the children they left behind in Jamaica.
Such an initiative is not only long overdue, it is an essential one in the uphill battle to force parents, especially fathers, to be accountable to their children and their society. The Public Defender also asserted that deadbeat fathers are "one of the principal causes of the breakdown of family life in the society and the consequent indiscipline of our young people."
When the proper legal framework is established between Jamaica and the U.S., the process to locate these deadbeats will be fraught with complications. These complications will arise out of the complexity of the plans that men adopt to avoid supporting their children. Many of these men went to the U.S. legitimately through the farm work and hotel workers programmes negotiated by the Government of Jamaica through the Ministry of Labour. A fair number of these men have broken their contracts and, aided and abetted by relatives and friends, live as aliens in the U.S. Others, sponsored by their mothers, leave their women and children behind and establish new families. More often than not, they value their American children more than the Jamaican children that they left behind.
Other deadbeat fathers went to the U.S. and Canada to study and fell so deeply in love with their new society that they forgot to keep in touch with their Jamaican wives, girlfriends and children. Still others, leave their Jamaican wives and children and become bigamists by marrying other women in America and Canada without bothering to get a divorce from the Jamaican wives. These bigamists are the most difficult to locate because they have to cover their tracks. Many of them take on new identities.
Added to all these are the hundreds of visa holders who abused their landing privileges and remain illegally in North America.
CHALLENGE
This mix of deadbeats pose a challenge because they are so afraid of deportation that they will go to any length to hide away
from all systems that are designed
to hold them responsible to their children.
In some North American jurisdictions deadbeat fathers pose real challenges to the welfare and social systems. Many children get no financial assistance from their fathers and they end up with their mothers on the welfare system and the state has to take the full responsibility for these families.
For instance, in Canada, deadbeat fathers have been known to go to great lengths to beat the system by remaining anonymous and undetected. Some change jobs frequently, others connive with their employers to get their salaries in cash rather than through the established payroll systems.
They do so to frustrate the maintenance enforcement system, which collects money on behalf of children by deductions from their payroll. Deadbeat fathers who stay in the legitimate employment structures can be traced through their social security numbers.
Because these fathers found ways to move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, some provincial governments such as Alberta attach child maintenance to the renewal of driver's licences. In other words, deadbeat fathers are unable in these regimes to renew their driver's licences without paying their outstanding child support costs.
Why are such men so desperate? Why do they go to such lengths
to neglect the well being of their children?
We need to realise that they are found in every society and they represent the wide cross-section of these societies. Some are very wealthy, others are extremely poor. They have something in common they see nothing wrong with the neglect of their parental
responsibility.
But could it be that they are so hateful of women that they will do anything to bring them grief anything including the punishment of their children? Deadbeat fathers and deadbeat husbands cause personal and group pain and they must be dealt with!
In the November 2001 edition of Talk Magazine, writer John Bloom chronicled the gut-wrenching crusade of one courageous woman, Lesley Weslock, who spent years tracking down the assets of her millionaire deadbeat husband. Mrs. Weslock's life was no ordinary one and she was a cut above the thousands of woman who would love to get justice in the case of divorce and the breakdown of marriages. Indeed, Mrs. Weslock was a middle-class Canadian woman who married Edward Weslock, a small-town boy from Iroquois Falls, Ontario.
In Mrs. Weslock's words "Edward was from a small town and in some ways socially awkward. I showed him how to use a knife and fork."
The elements of this modern "Pygmalian syndrome" dovetailed with Edward's business acumen and the couple moved to the U.S. where Mr. Weslock became the president of the prestigious Church's shoe conglomerate. This lifestyle saw the couple moving amongst the rich and famous while they lived in "sprawling homes, fancy neighbourhoods and realised boundless social aspiration".
Then one day the bottom dropped out of the bucket! One Friday morning in 1995, the millionaire left home and in one swipe he removed all the material and financial trappings from under Mrs. Weslock's feet.
Overnight, she was penniless and was forced to find a US$10 an hour job just to survive. Mrs. Weslock was brought low not because she was stupid but because she trusted her husband and admired his business successes. She expected him to do the right thing and let her have her rightful share of the family wealth when the marriage became intolerable.
Mr. Weslock said "Oh no, you won't", and Mrs. Weslock replied, "Oh, yes I will!"
She spent years tracking him and his assets, which were well-disguised and hidden in various accounts in a number of countries. Because she was tenacious and well-connected and because others recognised the thrust of the injustice, Lesley Weslock was able to find justice through her resourcefulness.
Unfortunately, the average working-class and middle-class woman who experience the spite of deadbeat fathers and husbands are unable to get justice because they do not have the resources to buy justice.
It is within this context that Jamaican women anxiously await the passing of the Rights of Spouses Bill, which is currently before Parliament. The women of Jamaica should applaud all efforts by the state to establish treaties with foreign governments in order to force men to live up to their responsibility to their children.
At the same time, we need to ensure that the local justice system works to ensure that "home grown deadbeats" are held accountable for the financial and other support of the children that they fathered, and the women that they partnered.
Dr. Glenda Simms is the
executive director of the Bureau
of Women's Affairs.
